


A Battered Cardboard Box

by Bookwormsarah



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Family Secrets, Gen, Miracle Day what Miracle Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:41:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26412814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bookwormsarah/pseuds/Bookwormsarah
Summary: When Mica gets her teeth into something she doesn’t let go.  Post Children of Earth (ignores Miracle Day), refers to the events therein, including canon character death.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 16





	A Battered Cardboard Box

**Author's Note:**

> I worked on Mica being seven during the events of Children of Earth. This was originally written for tw_femficfest 2011 over on livejournal.

Mica was eight when she found the box in the sideboard. The remote control had stopped working and there were no batteries in the usual place. Poking around she saw the box at the back, and pulled it out. It was stuck up with tape and she picked idly at it while she yelled for her mam. 

Rhiannon appeared in the doorway, screwdriver in hand, and promptly dropped it to snatch the box from her daughter’s curious hands. Mica received a smack on her arm and she was so startled she forgot to yell. The box was born away, and she couldn’t get it out of her mind, even when she found the new packet of batteries down the side of the sofa.

Four months later she was helping Johnny to clean the windows in her parents' room. He hoisted her onto his shoulders so she could bat away a cobweb, and she spotted something strange on top of the wardrobe. “Da? What’s that box up there?” Johnny looked disconcerted. 

“It’s your Mam’s”. This was clearly the end of discussion. 

David thought it must be a present for one of them, but lost interest when Mica pointed out that it wasn’t even summer holidays yet so it couldn’t be for Christmas, the next birthday was Mam’s, and the box was old. David shrugged, and Mica rolled her eyes. Boys, she decided, weren’t very interested in things. Next time she was alone in the big bedroom she jumped on the bed to look. The box had gone.

When Mica was ten, she caught sight of the box again. Rhiannon was finishing a job application and had asked Mica and her brother to put the clean washing away. David looked askance at the wobbly chair his sister dragged over, and contented himself with handing up the towels and sheets while Mica balanced on the arms and stuffed things in place. A flannel started to disappear down the back of the boiler, and as she fished it out she felt something hard and square nestling into the insulating jacket. Pulling an edge forward she recognised the battered cardboard, and felt her insides leap with triumphant recognition. Then Johnny appeared to lift her down, chiding her gently for using the  
swivel chair and not a sturdier one from the kitchen. She resolved to come back and find out properly what was going on.

That was the winter that Johnny lost his job and was home a lot. Mica was never on her own in the house, although she did use every opportunity to put the washing away and check with a cautious fingertip that the box was still there. Shortly after her eleventh birthday she hatched a Cunning Plan. She started hoarding empty packets (“School project, Mam”) and the next time she put the washing away she gave the parcel a good squeeze. A fortnight later she was prepared: two boxes from toothpaste tubes, with the box from a free sample of soap powder in the middle, all covered in an inside-out cereal box and stuck together with sellotape filched from the Christmas drawer. 

Once on the chair (Johnny insisted she used the solid, ancient one from Gran’s house) she slid the packet out from the hiding place and tucked the decoy into its place. The Mystery Box was tucked up under her jumper, where it made a lump. She paused. All that planning and she hadn’t thought about the next step. Quickly she picked up her clean clothes and held them against her front. That did it! She crept into her bedroom, dumped the clothes on the chair, slid the box behind the books on her bookshelf, and when Rhiannon looked in was calmly putting socks and t-shirts into their respective drawers. Rhiannon was baffled, but decided to take advantage of the unexplained domesticity.

The torch had been David’s, before he got the big fancy one Da used to keep in the car. Mica liked this one better though, you didn’t need batteries. She wasn’t sure how it worked but a good shake made something heavy inside move up and down and it stayed light for ages. She curled up tight, pretending to be asleep, until the door opened and closed again, and she heard Mam and Da on the landing. The front door clicked – Da was on nights - and a few minutes later the TV started a gentle buzz from the sitting room. Perfect. One final thing to make her safe – she slipped out of bed and unhooked her dressing gown,  
letting it fall to the floor in front of the door. Now if anyone tried to open it the door would stick, just like it had last Easter and she had to put her arm through the gap because everyone else’s was too big and she tore her dressing gown and Mam was a bit cross but not really very because it was pretty old. Now, finally, she was ready.

The sticky tape wasn’t very sticky any more, and flaked away at the lightest touch. A couple of bits cracked off and she dusted them off the edge of her bed. Carefully, she worked her way round, and then eased the lid up. Inside were bits of paper, and she almost cried with  
disappointment. She hadn’t expected to find treasure in Cardiff, but these looked like the bits of paper Mam threw out of her purse. There was a book with lists of numbers. Money? She blinked at the numbers. Were Mam and Da rich? Underneath were some bits of plastic, like Da’s work badge. The photo was familiar… Uncle Ianto! She looked back at  
the other bits of paper and saw ‘Ianto Jones’ printed on one corner. Interesting. Nancy Drew would have made lists of clues, and probably been kidnapped or knocked out in the process, but Mica didn’t have time for that. Instead she delved deeper, finding a little sheaf of photos. 

Suddenly she froze. The telly was off, and the squeaky board on the landing had gone. In a trice the box was under her bed and her head was on the pillow, although her flushed face and rapid breathing would never have fooled her mother. Luckily the silence within was enough, and soon the narrow line of light around the door vanished as the hall light was  
switched off. Cautiously Mica switched on her torch again. She was very sleepy and the wobbly torchlight was starting to make her eyes ache, so she put the box into her school bag under her science book, tucked the torch under her pillow, and went to sleep.

After yawning her way through maths and French, Mica made her way to the steps-up-to-nowhere. The door at the top was always locked, and the year nines told horrible stories about pupils trapped up there all holidays, but Mica wasn’t scared by that. Jade’s sister said it was only a boiler room and they shouldn’t be babies about it, but although Mica (like all Cardiff children) knew that Things lurked in dark places, she also knew that they usually left footprints and struggled with heavy duty padlocks. The tiny landing was tucked out of the way, and although it was near the staffroom, she had hidden there before on days that weren’t quite wet breaktime but should have been. Trembling slightly she undid her bag and spread the contents of the box in front of her. The papers about the money went back pretty quickly, as did some bits of newspaper. The card she looked at for longer. She was pretty  
sure it was Uncle Ianto, but it had a different name on the bottom. She shrugged and discarded it. 

The photos were more interesting. One of Uncle Ianto and a pretty lady outside a tent. They were laughing and it looked like they were holding the camera themselves. Two or three of the same group of people: in a pub, in what looked like a tunnel although there was a sofa there, and one where they were at desks and looked as if they didn’t know the photo was being taken. She liked that one. The lady with the dark hair was looking over her shoulder and looked as if she was talking to a man in a white coat. A lady with glasses had her hands out, and Uncle Yan was handing her a mug of tea. If these were her uncle’s things, that would explain why Mam didn’t want to talk about them. The last one was of her uncle and another man, who had his arm around her uncle’s shoulders. Uncle was smiling and the man was laughing. They were looking at each other. Mica frowned, as a voice echoed up the stairwell

“Mica Davis, what are you doing up there?” Mica jumped, frantically cramming the things into the box, but Mrs Adams, head of Year Ten was there and picking them up.

“Sorry, Miss,” she mumbled, glad that the things about the money were away. Mrs Adams looked at the photos and smiled. 

“Family pictures?”

“My uncle, Miss. I don’t remember him much.” Mrs Adams’ face softened. 

“Why don’t you work in the library?” This had never occurred to Mica, who only headed in there when they had silent reading in English last thing on a Thursday. 

“Didn’t know I was allowed, Miss.”

“Come with me.” Mrs Adams picked up a stray newspaper clipping and led the way through two classrooms (a route strictly forbidden to students) to the school library. Inside she ushered Mica to the desk and introduced her to Ms McGregor the librarian.

“Mica is looking for somewhere quiet to go through some papers for a family project.” The tall lady with the big grin waved her arms in welcome.

“Mica, hi. Lovely to find people interested in research. Let me know if you need to look anything up and I’ll sort you out with a library log-in, and the main rule is no food or drink.” As she spoke she had one eye on the clock “ If you come back at lunchtime I can show you anything you need.” The warning bell rang, and Mica hurriedly took the papers from Mrs Adams, pushed everything back into her schoolbag, only to find the box taken firmly from her hands. “Don’t crush those in - I’ll put them under the counter and you can pick them up later.” Feeling dazed, Mica headed off to science.

At lunchtime she was back; she needed the box. Ms McGregor greeted her with a wave and handed over her property, before proceeding to give her pupil a thorough lesson on the correct method of handling photos and documents. When Mica protested that these weren’t  
old pictures, and even the bits from the paper weren’t crumbly like the things from her Grandma’s house, the librarian snorted.

“Not the point. Archives tell us amazing things and need to last for future generations. Treat them with respect and you won’t have frayed edges and fingerprints. Always worth getting into the habit of learning to handle it properly from the start. Now, how do you plan to begin?” 

When the bell range, Mica had a List, the use of a computer (if there wasn’t a queue), and access to a scanner and copier. When she had found the box she hadn’t thought beyond looking inside. She hadn’t imagined a mystery. She stayed in at afternoon break to photocopy the contents of the box, and put them in a plastic folder provided by the librarian.  
The original box was smuggled back to its hiding place, and Mica stopped feeling guilty every time her Mam looked at her.

Now she had questions, so many questions, but neither of her parents would talk much about her uncle. He was a shadowy figure in her memory, quiet, besuited, happy to hand her some money and leave her alone. When she asked Mam she heard about him as a little boy, how he got into trouble, worse than she or David. When she asked about later, she was  
told that he had gone to work in London for the government, and then got transferred back to Cardiff. She gathered information like beads, holding them close and secret inside. He had died a hero said Rhiannon, her mouth in a firm line. This was always the end of the discussion. Mica had read the reports of the incidents, and found a whole mass of conspiracy theories online (cursing the restrictions on the school computers she delved further at home). She also had her own confused memories of the house being crowded and police everywhere, and everyone being scared and buses and queues and shouting and running and everyone push and pulling. She wasn’t sure how her uncle Ianto was a hero, but somehow she would find out.

She had no names for the people in the pictures, but she found words in the documents she didn’t understand and made a list of them in her Secret Private Notebook. Shannon had given it to her for her last birthday and it had a lock. She learned how to use the online newspaper archives and scoured things for her uncle’s name, and for the meaning of the word that cropped up time and time again: Torchwood. She researched the incidents mentioned, and in the process discovered how much fun dusty bits of paper could be. Sometimes she jumped off at tangents and learned about completely different things, sometimes weeks would pass without her picking up the copies, but she always eventually returned to her own private mystery. Some weekends she would wander around Cardiff  
looking for places in the cuttings, trying to imagine what had happened and what hadn’t been said. 

Time after time she returned to the library, the only place she could spread out her notes without questions. It was warmer than the playground and she found herself reshelving books and learning how to check them in and out. She even dragged her friends in the big library in town from time to time, and they joined in, initially with amused tolerance. The  
interest gripped, though neither of them felt Mica’s tingle of excitement when they crossed the threshold. Libraries were safe, comfortable places and full of exciting things to discover.

***

The new librarian was nice, thought Mica, observing from behind a stack of books she was busy shelving, but she wasn’t as friendly as Ms McGregor. The woman was quiet, calm, and wore her hair braided close to her head in interesting patterns. Mica was skeptical when she heard the old librarian was leaving, but so far she hadn’t been turfed out or given grotty jobs. Jade and Shannon thought she was weird for hanging out there at breaktime, but it was warm and comfy and she could get her homework done, which left time for mooching around with the others after school, and for babysitting which was a brilliant way of getting a bit of cash because Da was down to part time again and there wasn’t much about at home.

It was through the new librarian that she heard about the babysitting job, and agreed to stay after school to meet the parents. When the final bell rang she pushed her way through the heaving mass of bodies and fought her way up the stairs against the flow. She could see someone in the library, her back to the door, but as Mica looked through the window she turned to say something to the librarian. Mica stopped in her tracks. Her stomach gave a terrific flip and every single hair stood on end. Surely it wasn’t possible?

It was one of the women in the photographs. 

Sliding back into the stairwell she fished for the packet in her bag. The copied photo was battered round the edges, the paper soft with handling, but it was definitely her - the lady laughing with her uncle in a pub somewhere. Could this be the answer? Pulling herself together she straightened her ponytail and walked back in. She was damn well going  
to get this job, and if she didn’t she was going to get some answers.

Gwen Cooper had a girl of eight who needed a regular sitter because Ms Cooper was a police officer and worked shifts and her husband was sometimes out late with his job. The librarian smiled and ducked into her tiny office, and Mica tried to process the bizarre turn of events. Gwen talked about pay, expectations, and when she asked if Mica had any questions, the girl nodded and pushed the picture across the desk. There was silence.

The older woman looked down at the piece of paper and traced a finger over the surface, slowly shaking her head. Eventually she looked up and there were tears in her eyes. 

“I wondered whether you’d remember me.”

As she spoke, a memory stirred in the back of Mica’s mind, a memory of running and damp places and being very, very scared. 

“You knew my Uncle Ianto.”

Gwen nodded. “Yes. I worked with him. When Lois told me she had a student who might babysit for me, I had no idea it was you until I heard the name.” 

Finally, finally someone who could tell her all the things that had eluded her since she first found the box. Someone who could make sense of the half stories and conspiracy theories, of the tales of monsters and ghosts and hidden chambers. Someone who could tell her about the enigma that was Ianto Jones.

Mica squared her shoulders and stuck out her chin. “I’m Mica Davies and I have some questions I’d like to ask you.” She placed the battered notebook on the desk. The lock had long since given up and elastic bands held the bulging cover shut, stopping the printouts and  
photocopies from spilling across the desk. The cover was marked and tatty, a testament to all those hours researching, and all the places she had been. The handwriting matured from her careful twelve year old hand, through her fountain-pen-with-coloured-inks phase, to the steady script she used today. She looked at Gwen Cooper, who looked straight back at her, and then reached out her hand.

Gwen flipped through the notebook, spotting the logic, the theories (often far tamer than the truth), the dead ends carefully logged, and the dogged persistence that was reflected in the jut of the chin of the girl in front of her. She remembered Rhiannon and her determination to  
protect all those children. Mica at nearly sixteen was so very much her mother’s daughter. Those photographs! Faces smiled at her from a decade ago, and Gwen swallowed hard to shift the lump in her throat.

“You like researching, don’t you...” it wasn’t a question, and Mica stayed silent as the older woman turned pages. The girl had a clear mind, and had found out things... If she had access to the right databases she could work from home, or even a computer at school; Lois would set things up. Just a few hours a week would fill in the background for those endless reports. She could even combine it with a spot of babysitting. She was very young, but it wouldn't be dangerous work, and she knew so much already...

Gwen looked up Mica, who leaned forward eagerly. Gwen held out her hand.

“Mica Davies, welcome to Torchwood.”


End file.
